


iMessage, uMessage, We All Scream

by rowanthestrange_yugihell



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, M/M, One Version Of Events
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:20:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22115527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowanthestrange_yugihell/pseuds/rowanthestrange_yugihell
Summary: They’ve been texting foryears.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/O, Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan), Twelfth Doctor/O, Twelfth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 72
Kudos: 542





	iMessage, uMessage, We All Scream

* * *

  
It’s a moment of weakness. It always starts with a moment of weakness.

He’s in the middle of some nasty spat with Missy - she won’t talk to him, won’t respond at all, won’t even breathe when he’s there - there are government agents swarming around, and this is just what he needs on a Thursday.

It ends up with him being dragged away and trapped in an office (so not that different to a normal Thursday), while a bureaucrat shouts about the ludicrous idea of intelligent life ‘out there’. Considering the lack of intelligent life ‘in here’, the Doctor can see why he’d come to that conclusion.

The government official, highly displeased with having had to walk more than three paces from behind his desk, takes the carefully handwritten notebook whose images of him and police boxes started all this, cracks it hard against the desk, and flings it over his own shoulder to crash against the wall behind him, pages falling loose.

This is meant to intimidate him. Which is rather funny as for one, they don’t even know who he is, and simply think he’s a normal Theoretical Physics And Practical Philosophy Professor (if there was a normal for that, and he hadn’t just made it up himself); and two, because it makes the man look like he’s about three years old.

The Doctor’s never had much luck with toddlers.

He’s about to do something he hasn’t decided on yet, which Nardole would probably call ‘making a scene’, when the advisor who had been lingering by the wall peels away from it. Slowly edging towards the broken notebook.

There’s a glow of curiosity in the man that’s apparent even from here. Won’t last in this job five minutes. Or maybe he’ll change it for the better. Probably not though, they’ll ship him off somewhere just to be rid of him.

The Doctor finds himself talking nonsense to Mr Red Face to keep him distracted, letting his peripheral vision do all the work, watching as the man bends down for the book, reaches out a hand...

Don’t judge a book by its cover, you never know what alien secrets are inside.

The man pockets it, grins at him, and starts sliding back towards the door.

The second he’s there, the Doctor stands up and leaves in the middle of a sentence, striding off with the intelligence agent, their steps perfectly in sync, as the idiot whose name he never bothered to learn screams after them.

The man turns and smiles at him again, kind and warm, with a glint of mischief in such astonishingly deep brown eyes they would cause a lesser person to sue for emotional damage.

The spy reaches out a hand. As he did for the book. And that foolish eternal hope that the man sees something beyond _his_ cover too, starts sparking away inside him again.

The Doctor takes his hand and shakes it. They’re still walking. It’s almost like holding hands. But surprisingly ok.

They walk around the building twice, pretending they’re evading security, and words tumble out of the man as if he’d been waiting his whole life to talk to him like this.

He doesn't give the Doctor his real name, but the Doctor doesn’t mind. It’s not like the spy knows his either.

O. (Orville? Oakley? Otto?)

It’s a moment of weakness. It always starts with a moment of weakness. And combined with a nice, attractive, charming guy, who _likes_ him? Oh, a recipe for disaster.

(Oliver? Oscar? Odin?)

The emergency is easily dealt with, so that’s that, go back to the university, mark some essays, be caught between Missy’s dead silence and Nardole’s constant...presence.

But the handsome spy gives him his number. And if a buzzing in his head says something like this happened before, he can ignore it, because he’s never actually been a woman like that (let alone needed help fixing his internet) and it must have been one of his dreams. Besides. No-one ever gives him their number.

(Oswald?)

So he gives his back. Why not? And as O gives him a last wave and toothy smile goodbye, the Doctor waggles his hand in a ‘call me’ gesture that has previously, in his recollection, meant they probably won’t.

But O does.

(Omar? Omer?)

And so, suddenly, there’s just a little cobweb of a safety net for when he starts feeling like he’s in hell.

The Doctor texts him facts about space and stars - with even the occasional correction back, as O works through every secret file he can get his hands on. The Doctor never tells him too much about the alien thing, he’s still MI6 of course, but just enough to tell him that he’s right to believe there’s a whole fascinating universe out there, and maybe one day they could see it together.

(Orion?)

He starts looking forward to the 25th of December again. They wage war with pictures of increasingly fancy Christmas trees each year, and it starts feeling less like he lost a heart along with his wife.

(Orin?)

And when there’s a message about O being moved to Australia, well that’s fine, he never believed in time-zones or sleep anyway.

(Ozzy?)

Besides, texting at 3am makes him feel less like dying.

(Owen?)

He asks if it’s inappropriate to give a full scholarship to a clever should-be-student, because he’s never been good about knowing where those human boundaries are when it comes to money. O says so long as he promises not to elope with her, why not?

(Otis?)

They even have jam sessions - after a fashion. The Doctor works out how to make the phone record, and if he spends too long on the lighting, well, that’s just being a perfectionist. And when he can’t spend another second listening to Missy play Girls Just Wanna Have Fun in a minor key on the piano, somehow O’s accordion - comfortingly odd choice for a comfortingly odd person - soothes his ears. Which is remarkable for an accordion.

(Octavio)

He hints at things about his dissatisfaction with himself that he probably shouldn’t. And receives nothing but kindness and facts about clownfish in response.

(Orlando?)

And if her hearts flutter with anxiety the first time she texts him after she decides to go through with living, it’s just her being silly, because the string of emojis (Laughing face - firework - clownfish) suggest he understands her, and her joy, just fine.

(Olivia?)

When she immediately falls in with new people and abandons every remnant of her old life, she says sometimes she feels like an actor playing a part - badly at that - and asks if O’s ever felt that way. ‘All the time’, he replies.

(Olivier?)

She uses a flip phone for the fam because she likes the dramatic snap, but uses the iPhone for O because, well, that’s the only number he has and she hasn’t got round to putting it on her new phone. (Or perhaps if she was inclined to be honest, because she never wants anyone else from her old life to be able to contact her again).

(Ono?)

Except him.

(Ohno?)

O.

(Oh?)

Oh.  
  



End file.
